Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.

A philosopher once said, 'Half of good philosophy is good grammar.'

The German language speaks Being, while all the others merely speak of Being.

Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental.

Quite early on, and certainly since I started writing, I found that philosophical questions occupied me more than any other kind. I hadn't really thought of them as being philosophical questions, but one rapidly comes to an understanding that philosophy's only really about two questions: 'What is true?' and 'What is good?'

'Do not touch ontologically' doesn't mean 'are separated by empirically measurable hard edges.'

The actuality of thought is life.

Hegel says that Truth is a great word and the thing is greater still. With Dave we never seemed to get past the word.

Is the ground a philosophical concept? Has mind a relationship to the ground? Is it an idea to be investigated? Is the ground put together by thought?

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same. The basic fallacy , taking precedence over all specific metaphysical fallacies, is to interpret meaning on the model of truth.

The whole universe is composed of name and form. Whatever we see is either a compound of name and form, or simply name with form which is a mental image.

Learning philosophy is learning a particular kind of intuitive understanding.

Metaphysics is a cobweb that the mind weaves around things.

The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is.

Being that can be understood is language.

The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.

Logic is the science of the laws of thought, as thought,--that is of the necessary conditions to which thought considered in itself is a subject.

Philosophy is the science which considers truth.

Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

Philosophy stands in need of a science which shall determine the possibility, principles, and extent of human knowledge à priori.

That which is communicated, i.e., understood, is metaphysical. The means of communication is physical.

Time, space, and causality are only metaphors of knowledge, with which we explain things to ourselves.

It is possible to be a meta-physician without believing in a transcendent reality; for we shall see that many metaphysical utterances are due to the commission of logical errors, rather than to a conscious desire on the part of their authors to go beyond the limits of experience.